ON NOV 4, journalist Anderson Cooper did the US a favour. He expertly deconstructed on his CNN show the bogus rumour that President Barack Obama's trip to Asia would cost US$200 million (S$260 million) a day.
This was an important 'story'. It underscored just how far ahead of his time Mark Twain was when he said a century before the Internet: 'A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.'
But it also showed that there is an antidote to malicious journalism - and that is good journalism.
In case you missed it, a story circulating around the Web on the eve of President Obama's trip said it would cost US taxpayers US$200 million a day - about US$2 billion for the entire trip.
Mr Cooper said he felt impelled to check it out because the evening before, he had Representative of Minnesota Michele Bachmann, a Republican and Tea Party favourite, on his show and had asked her where exactly the Republicans will cut the budget. Instead of giving specifics, Ms Bachmann used her airtime to inject a phony story into the mainstream.
She answered: 'I think we know that just within a day or so, the President of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers US$200 million a day. He's taking 2,000 people with him. He'll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.'
The next night, Mr Cooper explained that he felt compelled to trace that story back to its source, since someone had used his show to circulate it.
His research, he said, found that it had originated from a quote by 'an alleged Indian provincial official', from the Indian state of Maharashtra, 'reported by India's Press Trust... I say 'alleged' provincial official', Mr Cooper added, 'because we have no idea who this person is, no name was given'.
It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American President.
'It was an anonymous quote,' said Mr Cooper. 'Some reporter in India wrote this article with this figure in it. No proof was given; no follow-up reporting was done. Now, you'd think if a member of Congress was going to use this figure as a fact, she would want to be pretty darn sure it was accurate, right? But there hasn't been any follow-up reporting on this Indian story. The Indian article was picked up by the Drudge Report and other sites online, and it quickly made its way onto conservative talk radio.'
Mr Cooper then showed the following snippets - Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh talking about Mr Obama's trip: 'In two days from now, he'll be in India at US$200 million a day.'
Then Mr Glenn Beck, on his radio show, saying: 'Have you ever seen the President, ever seen the President go over for a vacation where you needed 34 warships, US$2 billion - US$2 billion, 34 warships. We are sending - he's travelling with 3,000 people.'
In Mr Beck's rendition, Mr Obama's official state visit to India became 'a vacation' accompanied by one-tenth of the US Navy. Ditto for conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage. He said: 'US$200 million? US$200 million each day on security and other aspects of this incredible royalist visit; 3,000 people, including secret service agents.'
Mr Cooper then added: 'Again, no one really seemed to care to check the facts. For security reasons, the White House doesn't comment on the logistics of presidential trips, but they have made an exception this time.'
He then quoted White House press secretary Robert Gibbs as saying: 'I am not going to go into how much it costs to protect the President, (but this trip) is comparable to when President Bill Clinton and when President George W. Bush travelled abroad. This trip doesn't cost US$200 million a day.'
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said: 'I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 per cent of the navy and some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the President's trip to Asia. That's just comical. Nothing close to that is being done.'
Mr Cooper also pointed out that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the entire war effort in Afghanistan was costing about US$190 million a day and that former president Bill Clinton's 1998 trip to Africa - with 1,300 people and of a roughly similar duration and cost, according to the Government Accountability Office and adjusted for inflation, was 'about US$5.2 million a day'.
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem.
It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues - deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate - let alone act on them.
Facts, opinions and fabrications just blend together. But the carnival barkers that so dominate America's public debate today are not going away - and neither is the Internet.
All you can hope is that more people will do what Mr Cooper did - so when the next crazy lie races around the world, people's first instinct will be to doubt it, not repeat it.
Thomas Friedman. NEW YORK TIMES
